Dalziel + Scullion: Breath Taking Multi-city installation and associated debate from 22 May 05
The latest work by award-winning artists Matthew Dalziel and Louise Scullion will go live in cities across the UK on 22 May 2005. Appointed Fellows of the Huntly-based Deveron Arts earlier this year, the artists have devoted the Fellowship to extend their investigations into the complex relationship between mankind and the natural world. Breath Taking will be seen in Aberdeen, Birmingham, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Liverpool, London, Newcastle and Manchester as well as in Clashindarroch, the proposed site for a major Wind Farm, and will coincide with the World Renewal Energy Conference. Much of Dalziel + Scullion’s practice looks at the shifting environment and increasing urbanisation of the population, and the impact, both social and cultural, of these developments. Breath Taking has as its starting point the current debate surrounding planning proposals for wind farms. It seeks to extend the debate from the local to the global, inviting audiences not simply to take a “pro” or “anti” position on the issue, but rather to question the implications for the sustainability of civic life if the current collective levels of energy consumption continue; the repercussions, potential and actual, of our love affair with materialism; and the romantic relationship between urban civilisation and the countryside in the 21st century. When we look at what is actually generating the ecological crisis that we are facing, it becomes apparent that it is not separable from the dynamics of the global economic system itself, which is governed by constant economic growth. In fact, the global economic system is increasingly becoming a challenge to the processes of the biosphere in terms of scale. This situation therefore casts doubt upon the viability and effectiveness of environmental approaches – such as the desperate response of scattering our remaining habitat with wind turbines - which simply accepts the imperative of growth and materialism without question. Ironically, the consequent